A New Look Under the Brim of the Sombrero

The Sombrero Galaxy sits around 30 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo, tilted so that we view it almost perfectly from the side. That edge-on angle gives it the distinctive wide-brimmed silhouette it is named for.

In Webb's NIRCam view, dust in the galaxy's outer ring blocks the light of the stars behind it, drawing a sharp dark line across the glowing disk. In the central region, roughly 2,000 globular clusters shine in the near-infrared, each one a gravitationally bound swarm of hundreds of thousands of ancient stars.

Webb's resolution is fine enough to pick out individual stars in the surrounding field, including cool red giants that glow brightly at these wavelengths. Paired with the earlier mid-infrared observation, where the dust itself lights up, the two views turn a familiar galaxy into something new.